Mr. Speaker, under the stewardship of the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, her department has engaged in placing advertising in numerous newspapers praising the virtues of the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

Unfortunately, the changes the ads are praising are contained in part 6 of Bill C-50, which is presently being studied in the Standing Committees on Finance and Citizenship and Immigration. Bill C-50 has not yet passed this House.

Another problem is that the moneys being used to pay for these ads have not been approved by the House. The moneys are contained in Bill C-50.

Mr. Speaker, I am asking you to rule on this matter and, should you rule in my favour, I am willing to move a motion to have the matter referred to the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.

I have to advise the House that I have received two notices in respect of this matter. I think the other one will be raised later today so I will defer any ruling until I have heard other submissions, and, of course, there may be a response in due course as well.

Dave MacKenzieConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to subsection 20(5) of the RCMP Act, it is my pleasure to table, in both official languages, 20 Royal Canadian Mounted Police First Nations Community Police Service agreements for first nations communities in the provinces of British Columbia, Alberta, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick.

These tripartite agreements, totalling over $21.3 million in funding, are negotiated among the Government of Canada, the provinces and the first nations under the first nations policing program.

These agreements send a clear message that the Government of Canada is committed to making communities safer and working in collaboration with the provinces as well as first nations communities.

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Etobicoke Centre for seconding this bill. The Official Languages Commissioner, Graham Fraser, said that the highest court of the land must be composed of bilingual judges in order to reflect our values and our Canadian identity as a bijural and bilingual country. I would add that legal skills must include linguistic skills, especially since this court represents a last resort.

I propose an amendment to the Official Languages Act. Section 16(1) of the act sets out the requirements concerning the understanding of both official languages for every federal court, with the exception of the Supreme Court. I propose that this exception be removed, so that the highest court of the land truly reflects our bijural and bilingual values and identity.

Translation is not enough, because as members know, there is parallel drafting. Judges must grasp legal nuances in both English and French. I urge the House to vote in favour of this bill.

Mr. Speaker, I move that the fourth report of the Standing Committee on Status of Women presented on Monday, February 25, 2008, be concurred in.

I am especially proud to speak to this motion today because we have been trying to get the current government to find solutions to this recurring and difficult issue.

I would like to read part of the report to the House. It states:

It requests that the Minister for the Status of Women and the Minister for Indian Affairs:

--increase recurrent core funding for aboriginal women’s shelters, as is already the case for shelters in Quebec;

--put a stop to the delays in the evaluation of aboriginal women’s shelters, scheduled for March.

I represent the riding of Churchill, which is located in Manitoba, and I have dozens of first nations in my riding that are represented by a number of political organizations, one of which is a northern political organization referred to as MKO, a second political organization called the Southern Chiefs' Organization, and the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

I mentioned those organizations because a lot of critical work has been done on this issue in conjunction with first nations political organizations and first nations women's councils within those political organizations. This is a key point in this discussion because one of the discussions we are having with the current government is on an issue that is specific to first nations women, which is the issue of matrimonial real property.

Earlier this week, the government introduced Bill C-47 dealing with the issue of matrimonial real property. The reason it is important for Canadians to understand why all three opposition parties want the bill to go to committee for further discussion and to hear from witnesses is that there was a process in place on that bill. The current government engaged in a process with the Assembly of First Nations Women's Council and the Native Women's Association of Canada and, as we all know, the Assembly of First Nations represents first nations all across the country.

I would like to add that it is often inferred that the Assembly of First Nations is a male organization that is made up of men who represent women. However, the Assembly of First Nations and the first nations women's council are very proud of the fact that they have a high representation of women in politics and, in fact, a greater representation of women in politics than here in the House. There are over 120 women chiefs in Canada who feel that their voices are vital and that there is an equitable relationship at that political table.

It would be great if we could work with a government that respects those voices, as we saw in the process for the creation of the matrimonial real property legislation. The government communicated with first nations women and hired a fine representative, Wendy Grant-John, as the ministerial representative to undertake dialogue sessions across this country. It was encouraging because first nations women felt that they were participating in the process, which is what the House called for.

First nations women and aboriginal women across the country have called for development on this matter for 25 years. Since Bill C-31 in the mid-eighties, we have seen that first nations women and aboriginal women in Canada have felt it was critical that their voices be heard on these issues. We cannot have bodies making laws and policies without their input and participation because it will not work. We saw that with Bill C-31 and we see the impact of that today as that case moves to the Supreme Court of Canada.

It is now more than 20 years later and we do not want to be doing that any more. The role of parliamentarians is to represent Canadians and my role, as the member for Churchill, is to represent my constituents and ensure we engage Canadians in a process to responsibly make legislation.

I will go back to the process in which first nations women and aboriginal women across the country were encouraged by the process of developing MRP legislation. A comprehensive report was written by the ministerial representative and it had many recommendations. Lo and behold, the legislation was created without any participation by the Native Women's Association of Canada or the Assembly of First Nations Women's Council. The legislation was introduced and a big press release went out from the federal government but neither of those organizations were informed.

It is discouraging and disappointing that the legislation does not take into account the numerous recommendations that were made. I think that is sort of the fundamental dialogue that has been happening in many of the departments.

Although we were encouraged by the process in the beginning, we could have been looking to other patterns from the federal government that might have indicated to us that we were being too hopeful.

On the issue of Status of Women Canada, it has been very clear from the time the Conservatives took power that there were serious concerns from the opposition parties and from women across this country because one of the initial steps the government took was to cut $5 million from Status of Women Canada. The government referred to that as an effective savings exercise. I think the former president of the treasury board, now the Minister of the Environment, used the crass term “trimming the fat”.

There still are great inequities for all Canadian women. In fact, the women in this caucus have made a commitment to undertake a gender equity study. We want to commit ourselves and continue to put pressure on the government toward women's equity. We know, after decades of discussion around women's issues, that Canadian women still only earn 70% of what men earn in this country.

When I talk about Canadian women, we need to be cognizant of the inequities. We have a gender inequity to begin with. What has happened to aboriginal women in this country has no comparison. Aboriginal women fall far below what non-aboriginal women have in terms of access to services. Myself and many members in this House have talked about the great inequity in services for first nations women.

When we talk about women's issues we need to talk about it in a holistic manner. There is absolutely no other way that we can talk about this issue around family violence, women's shelters and the critical need to deal with these issues. This is not an issue in and of itself. It is about all the root causes. When we talk about the root causes of inequity for Canadian women we need to talk about it for aboriginal women as well.

I have met with aboriginal women in my constituency over the last couple of years to discuss women's issues. Often, people would think that women's issues would deal with gender equity, but what the aboriginal women and first nations women have repeatedly said is that their priority issues are their families.

There is a cumulative effect of policies that have not worked for first nations people. For instance, yesterday we had the aboriginal affairs minister at committee and one of the things we were talking about was child and family services for first nations. This is grossly underfunded compared to services for Canadians, so we have that inequity.

We have education systems for schooling on reserve. The Conservative government tends to use this type of language that would make Canadians think that first nations schools do not follow provincial curricula, as if the tripartite agreements really are the only way in which there can be a relationship with first nations where they are educating their children with similar standards to other Canadians, but that is not so.

All first nations schools have to follow a provincial curriculum and meet provincial standards, yet their per capita funding for their students is significantly less than that for Canadian students. It may range per capita between 50% and 75%. Again, what we are talking about is underfunding for first nations children education, which is K to 12. That is not even post-secondary.

The other area of concern is health services. We have unanimously adopted Jordan's principle in this House. Jordan's principle originated from a family in my home community of Norway House Cree Nation and I am so proud of the family for being able to go public with their story because it was a tragedy.

For those Canadians who do not know, Jordan was a boy who had been born with a rare syndrome and had to be hospitalized for the first couple of years of his life. When the doctors said that Jordan would be able to go home but would require certain services, some medical devices and such, these were services that any other Canadian child would have. Any other child in that same situation would go home and provincial health care would pick up those services. That is normal.

In this case, because the child was residing on reserve, the provincial jurisdiction in Manitoba would not provide those services on reserve. The federal government, through Indian and Northern Affairs Canada and through the First Nations and Inuit Health branch, said that it did not have a responsibility to provide those services.

It developed into an interdepartmental battle, even though first nations are under federal jurisdiction, and there was a jurisdictional battle between the province and the feds. So, when Jordan was ready to go home, there was no jurisdiction that would pick up the cost of his services, which any other Canadian child would have been entitled to. It is what we refer to as universal health care in this country.

Jordan was two years old and as this battle waged on between departments and between jurisdictions, two years passed and Jordan lost his life. He passed away at a hospital and he never did get to go home because the issue of who would pay for his services was never settled.

It is a tragedy beyond belief in this great country of ours, a country which is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, that this would occur and yet these are issues that first nations families are dealing with on a daily basis.

There are systematic challenges in health because we do not have the same spectrum of health services under first nations and Inuit health grants. We do not have the ability to access provincial health services on reserve. So we are talking about health services. We are talking about chronic underfunding in education for first nations children. We are talking about chronic underfunding for first nations educational infrastructure and we are also talking about chronic underfunding for children and family services.

Last week the Auditor General released a report on the first nations child and family services program. One of the items which the government has been so proud of is that it is working on a new model in Alberta. We have heard about this model now for over two years. One of the things that I thought was really interesting in this report was that the current minister and the previous minister have said publicly that “money is not the solution to the problem”. I am paraphrasing but if the parliamentary secretary is going to insist on the exact wording, I will have that later today.

I found information within the Auditor General's report on the Alberta model. Although on the one hand Conservatives keep insisting that money is not the problem, even though all these systems are underfunded, on the other hand their Alberta model, the operation and prevention components, will have increased in funding by 74% when the new formula is fully implemented.

That is really significant because it says that we do need to look at equitable funding. Absolutely, we need the systems to be effective. When we talk about effective results, we are talking about the lives of children and that is a priority concern for first nations women. That has been inextricable from the discussions on first nations women's issues.

The reason I went into all of this discussion around all of these issues and this dynamic with the current government and the historical impacts that are affecting first nations women and their families is because it is really important.

There are two points. We have a government which has not increased funding on reserve by one penny in the last three budgets. Conservatives talk about the $300 million that they transferred to the provinces for off reserve housing, yet we can get no accounting for that money. In Manitoba that meant $32 million, so again, we have aboriginal women off reserve, on reserve.

Off reserve means we have no accounting for that money. On the issue of housing we have heard the Conservatives talk numerous times about the $300 million they committed to private home ownership on reserve. Again, we have no accounting for that money. We had the departmental officials at our committee yesterday and again no information was forthcoming.

The reason this is all so important is because all of these issues are contributing factors to the whole issue of violence. When people are frustrated, when people are challenged, when people are dealing with the residential school impact, what we refer to as historical trauma, then we are dealing with challenging situations. In my riding I have some communities that are so challenged for housing that they have two dozen people living in one home. They have no health services and no adequate education services.

It becomes an enormous burden on women and families. There is a need to address the issue of shelters at a time when they are so critically underfunded, as well as prevention and supports for families, not only in shelters but for child and family services. It is time the government commits itself to truly do work that will benefit aboriginal women.

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for putting this motion forward this morning. It is an important issue that should be discussed. I am glad too that she made the connection between the provision of emergency shelters and safe houses, and the overall housing situation for first nations in Canada, but that is true of women all across Canada.

She will probably be aware of a major report that was done last fall in Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon about the housing situation in the north. One of the key conclusions in that report was that the situation for women was particularly troubling given that the lack of housing options often forced women to return to relationships and homes that were not safe for them. Because they did not have other options for safe housing, they were forced back into their relationships.

I wonder if she could relate that to the lack of a national housing program here in Canada. It is something that the previous Liberal government got out of in a major way. The current government has taken no significant new initiatives on housing at all and I wonder if she could talk about how the need for shelters relates to the lack of a national housing program in Canada.

Mr. Speaker, the member's question is an excellent one. One thing that the NDP often either directly refers to or infers about the past Liberal government concerns the cuts that government made in the mid-1990s. I remind the House and Canadians that we Liberals inherited a $43 billion deficit from the previous Conservative government, and it looks like we are on the slide again with the current Conservative government.

However, we really do need to talk about housing. The Conservative government does not want to talk about housing, particularly on reserve housing. Just yesterday the minister was asked specifically about housing for Inuit people in Nunavut and there was no response.

Again, aboriginal people have been through inordinate circumstances through the processes of policy and legislation in this country. I think we have been making significant impacts in terms of our voices being heard at the federal level, which I attribute to our first nations leadership, Métis leadership and Inuit leadership insisting upon that and organizing our political structures over the last number of decades.

Also, however, what I believe is necessary is a conciliatory relationship between the federal government and aboriginal leadership. What is so critical about this is that the federal government needs to respond to the realities of what has occurred over this last century. One of the critical issues is housing.

I would like to clarify something about my riding, which is about two-thirds of the province of Manitoba, if not a bit more. We have about three dozen first nations in the riding. We have two safe houses for first nations women, both in remote communities, although one is easier to access because of a rail line. Neither safe house has funding for programs for the families. They do not have access to services in terms of supporting the workers and their own capacity development.

Again, we are talking about an enormous region in which we have two safe houses. As the member has discussed, if we are going to talk about just those two communities, both of those communities have a chronic lack of housing. Where are women to go? Numerous times I have heard Conservative members ask why they do not just move away, move to the city.

These are their traditional territories. Although we are in a process of transition, people lived on the land and these communities are where we have been for thousands of years. This is where these families have been for thousands of years. They have had a traditional lifestyle. This is their home.

We are in a transitional period in which we are developing this, but without safe and adequate housing for the women and their families, they are going to continue in this cycle. Also, we are without program dollars to help the families and the women in breaking these cycles.

As well, dealing with historical trauma is well known within the aboriginal community. I am sure we will adhere to the truth and reconciliation process, which is a matter directly related to the residential schools system. We have what is called an intergenerational impact. In regard to the children who were removed from their homes, a lot of families and individuals did not understand the concept of family. They were three years old or five years old when they were taken from their homes. Many of them were never allowed to go home again until they had finished school.

Again, not only was that a complete interruption in the family dynamic and the cultural dynamic for these people, but it was a complete alienation from understanding their role as family members and as parents. These are the types of challenges that people are dealing with in addition to the systemic inequities. What we are talking about, obviously, are cumulative effects. It is a critical issue.

This government needs to commit itself. The government says it is concerned about aboriginal women and children. Why are we not seeing concrete steps? Why have we not seen one penny for housing for first nations people on reserve in the last three federal budgets? Why have we not had an evaluation of our women's shelters? Why do we not have core funding? Why do we not have program funding?

We are not even talking about the first nations women's shelters that are provided for regions of my riding. We have two in two remote communities in my riding. That is grossly inadequate.

Mr. Speaker, I have one more question for the member for Churchill. I myself understand her background of being a first nations woman. I also understand her view of women's shelters. Having been with the RCMP for 18 years, I have utilized many shelters for victims of domestic violence. It is quite a need and it has to be looked at. I believe that we in the government are looking at it.

Today, the Tsawwassen First Nation's final agreement, Bill C-34, is to be debated. With us being first nations, we have to progress one step at a time to get everything done or try to meet everybody's needs as first nations, but what I see here today is an attempt at filibustering, at stalling. Are we going to go on with the Tsawwassen First Nation final agreement? Why is she delaying this bill today?

Mr. Speaker, I find it shocking that the member would infer that because we are both first nations we have the same priorities. I appreciate that the member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River is new and I congratulate him on his arrival here. It is encouraging for me as an individual to see aboriginal people in the House. However, to infer that because we are both first nations we should have the same priorities I think is a little unfair.

Because of his experience, he does know that first nations women and first nations families and, I would add, all of us, women and men, are challenged by the historical trauma, by the years of colonization and its policies and legislation, which have had a detrimental impact on our communities.

Rod BruinoogeConservativeParliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians

Mr. Speaker, in relation to this debate today, I, like the member for Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, am quite surprised that the member for Churchill would bring about a concurrence motion stopping important debate on bills such as Bill C-47, which would extend matrimonial property rights to first nations women on reserve, and the Tsawwassen bill and debate later today.

It is surprising that the Liberal Party would bring a concurrence motion in this middle of this, so I feel that on behalf of our government we need to bring forward an important motion. I move:

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's speech was very interesting. I would like to ask the hon. member a fairly simple question.

The Indian Act shackles aboriginal people. It impedes their ability to move forward with the economic development they require. The absence of the ability of people who live on reserve to own land is a major restriction in their ability to borrow money and engage in economic development.

Does the member believe that the Indian Act should be amended or scrapped?

Another question I would like to ask is based on the fine speech by my colleague from Manitoba. She gave a passionate speech about the horrible gaps that exist in health care for aboriginal people who live on reserve. They are betwixt and between a federal government that will not enable aboriginal communities to have the resources to provide the needed health care and provincial governments that are cash strapped and do not believe it is their mandate to provide that health care. We see the implications of this on the ground in that aboriginal people on reserves have the worst parameters in terms of health care in our nation by far.

I ask the member, what is his government going to do to bridge this gap and enable aboriginal people to get the health care they require? Right now they are in limbo.

Mr. Speaker, the member opposite speaks to important reforms that need to happen in first nations communities across the country.

I wonder though why he sits in that party. That party has set aside so many initiatives and has voted against so many initiatives that would actually improve the system which unfortunately shackles, as he has said, first nations people on reserve.

Even today we are supposed to be debating extending matrimonial real property rights to first nations women, but his party brought forward a concurrence motion which actually delays that debate. It does not make any sense why someone who would want to extend benefits to first nations women on reserve would stand in the way of matrimonial real property. That is very difficult for me to understand.

Our government has taken a number of initiatives and will continue to, including today hopefully, once the Liberals get out of our way.

Mr. Speaker, last year the government announced some money for aboriginal women's shelters, for 35 existing shelters and 5 new ones. That is certainly not enough for most of us who are concerned about the situation regarding shelters and safe houses and given what we have already heard in the debate this morning of the number of communities where aboriginal women do not have access to shelters.

One strange aspect of the announcement was that northern aboriginal women were excluded from any of this funding. There was no funding for aboriginal women in the north.

Could the parliamentary secretary explain why the government ignored the needs of first nations and Inuit women in the north for new shelters and funding for existing shelters in that announcement last year?

Mr. Speaker, the question speaks to some important matters that our government has begun working on. The investment we made of nearly $56 million toward women's shelters that are on reserve throughout southern Canada has been very well received by the communities.

The member's question was in relation to the north. Of course the north is covered by important territories where our government has continued the process of devolving province-like powers to these entities. Our government tends to believe it is important that territories have the full wherewithal to deliver the services that are within provincial jurisdiction.

We have increased transfer payments to the territories. We are hopeful they will be able to continue their important work in delivering the services that they need to actually take part in for themselves.

The New Democratic Party has voted against all of our budget enhancements in terms of equalization to the territories. Perhaps the member could talk to his leader to change that perspective in the future.